WHAT DO Allan Border, Dean Jones and Jack Moroney share in common as Australian Test players? Until now, they are the only batsmen who have scored both a `pair' and a century in each innings. Border and Jones are household names, but who is Jack Moroney? Is he the John Rodger Moroney who, according to the ACS register of NSW players, was born in Sydney in October 1919? Or is he the J. A. R. Moroney of some scorebooks?

These questions were prompted by hearing Jack Moroney talking with Jim Maxwell on ABC radio during a lunch-break in the broadcast of the Test between Australia and South Africa from Johannesburg early in 1994. This episode led to these questions being answered in a generous and hospitable interview by Moroney at his home on the picturesque NSW coast, 60 miles south of Sydney, during which the cobwebs of misinformation were cleared away.

John (with no second name) Moroney was born at Macksville, on the mid-north coast of NSW, on July 24, 1917. Unusually, he played no regular organised cricket until he was 17. While playing cricket at St Joseph's College, Sydney, he remembers a brief coaching visit by a famous ex-student of the school, Stan McCabe. Apart from some coaching from his father, Moroney remained otherwise self-taught as a cricketer.

He followed his father into the teaching profession in 1938 and in April 1942 he joined the Australian Army as one of 200 teachers utilised as instructors. A year later he transferred to the RAAF, working in radio. This brought him to Sydney, and an introduction to the Marrickville club for the 1943–44 season, where he was drafted into the first-grade side at the mature cricket age of 26. Moroney scored his initial grade century against Cumberland, which included lifting legspinner Lou Benaud, father of Richie, for three sixes.

Jack and Bobbie Moroney on their golden wedding day, 1993, the `pair' in the 1950 Brisbane Test a distant unhappy memory

Air Force service saw Moroney posted to Melbourne during the 1944–45 season, which he played with Fitzroy, home of the famous Harvey brothers. For NSW's initial game after the war, against Queensland at Brisbane, a replacement was needed for an injured Bill O'Reilly. The selectors called up Moroney, who had just scored 203 not out in a grade match. He scored 29 batting at No. 6 and 22 not out at No. 9.

After two modest seasons in the NSW side, Moroney made an impact during the 1947–48 season when he twice reached the nineties, including a powerful 96 against the Indian tourists, when he dominated a second-wicket partnership of 153 in 123 minutes with Arthur Morris.

In 1948–49, O'Reilly counselled Moroney to move from the middle order to open and fill the spot left vacant in the national team caused by yet another absence of Sid Barnes. In addition, both Barnes and Ron Saggers (his club captain) had urged Moroney to curb his naturally forceful style. Barnes, with his customary mixture of brutal realism and self-promotion, told him: `Get runs. It doesn't matter how you get them. Watch the really good batsmen and see how we do it.'

 NSW tried him once as an opener during the season at Adelaide, and he accepted the opportunity by scoring 59 and 98, with a second-innings partnership with Morris of 130 in 110 minutes.

In February 1949, the Kippax-Oldfield Testimonial match at Sydney was used as a trial match for potential tourists to South Africa in 1949–50. (There was also the poignancy of its being Sir Donald Bradman's last first-class appearance at the SCG.) Moroney seized the moment as an opener with 217, an innings marked by initial caution so that his first hundred took 220 minutes. He then opened out into sustained driving of hand-bruising power, and his second hundred took only 79 minutes. Moroney's berth to South Africa was secure.

He was an immediate success in South Africa, and went into the first Test at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, having scored three centuries. Morris was dismissed in the first over of the match and then Moroney faced the gentle pace of John Watkins, who started with two sides and five widish balls. Moroney played the sixth behind point and set off, but Keith Miller sent him back. In turning, he slipped on the damp surrounds of the pitch, and even so, was still close to making his ground when `Billy' Wade broke the stumps.

 Moroney adds a pair of noughts to his pair of centuries: a rare Test performance. But was he really out? Bowler Trevor Bailey swings round in his follow-through as Arthur McIntyre runs in and wicketkeeper Godfrey Evans joins in the appeal

 Moroney came back with a solid 87 in the next Test, but his tour of achievement arrived in the fourth Test, again at Johannesburg. Moroney (118) and Morris (111) laid the foundations of a big total with a stand of 214. It was in the second innings, with the match headed for a draw, that R. S. Whitington made his jibe that Moroney was `batting like a purposeless porpoise'.

As Moroney tells it, he was playing freely when Miller joined him. Miller urged him to keep his head down and reach the rare achievement of two centuries in the one Test. Moroney heeded the advice, but he couldn't have dawdled too much as his 101 not out came in 225 minutes from only 52 eight-ball overs.

At Brisbane against England in 1950–51, Moroney had the mortification of scoring a duck in the first over of each innings, a macabre record. In the first innings he went to push Trevor Bailey into the vacant leg-side field only to edge the ball to Len Hutton at leg slip. Australia's second innings took place on a treacherous Brisbane sticky wicket and Moroney's was one of three ducks made before Lindsay Hassett declared at 32 for 7. Moroney feels that Bailey was awarded a slightly generous lbw decision as he believes that he was outside the off stump when the big inswinger struck him.

 Moroney was peremptorily dropped from the Australian side and then spent the next two seasons making runs consistently for NSW. Against John Goddard's 1951–52 West Indians he reminded the selectors of his capabilities by taking 270 minutes to reach his century and then smashing another unbeaten 66 in an hour. He became the third opening partner for Arthur Morris in the razor's-edge fourth Test at Melbourne, which Australia stole by one wicket. Moroney scored 26 and 5, trapped lbw by Ramadhin in each innings.

At the end of that season, Moroney decided to retire from first-class cricket. By that stage he and his wife had four young children and NSW's programme meant he had spent seven successive Christmases away from home.

A succession of country appointments saw him still scoring runs in the strong Newcastle competition when he was 50.

He retired as a primary-school principal in 1977 and lives in retirement near Wollongong, occasionally attending a day of a Test in Sydney. Despite a slight incapacity as the result of a stroke, Moroney is incisive and witty in his observations and analysis. His memory for dates and figures is sharp and he has a wide, yet self-deprecating knowledge of the game. Ask him about the best bowlers he faced and he quickly describes the variety of Bill Johnston, the graceful menace of Ray Lindwall, the intimidating unpredictability of Keith Miller. He emphasises unhesitatingly, though, the supremacy of Bill O'Reilly as an attacking bowler.

His best innings? Again he is quick to nominate 106 scored on a Sydney greentop against Victoria in his last season of first-class cricket.

Several times in our conversation Moroney reiterated the respect and admiration which he holds for Arthur Morris as a person and a cricketer.

Whichever way we decide to assess Moroney as a cricketer he is a formidable presence in Australian cricket. David Dobson of Melbourne has calculated that Moroney lies 15th in the averages of Australian batsmen who have scored over 4000 runs, behind Bob Cowper and ahead of Norm O'Neill. He was also a heavy scorer in a period when Australian cricket was strong.

Despite this evidence, Moroney's batting was often labelled as stodgy. Certainly he could be painstaking and dogged, yet Ray Webster's encyclopaedic research shows that Moroney had an unerring ability to dispatch the bad ball as in the large majority of his centuries over half of his runs came in boundaries. And he could some quickly, driving and pulling with real ferocity: his second century against South Africa contained 17 fours. We need to bear in mind that Moroney was surrounded by flamboyant strokemakers who, perhaps, threw his solidity into stark contrast.

Jack said to me: `I didn't think anyone would remember as oldtimers.' He can rest assured that his name will be to the fore whenever Australian batsmen of character and substance are being discussed.

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